New Michelin Lunar Wheel based on the Tweel

At first sight you’ll recognise the wheel above as the Michelin Tweel. The Tweel was a concept wheel which used flexible spokes which deform to absorb shock. It does not need air pressure. It also had the ability to be “tuned” to have different vertical and lateral stiffness. This way, vertical stiffness can be reduced to improve ride comfort while lateral stiffness can be increased to improve handling and cornering ability. This allows one tweel to have the best of both worlds!

The Tweel has undergone more R&D and will in the future be used as a lunar wheel for NASA moon rovers. Michelin already supplies NASA with tyres for its space shuttles for more than 20 years now. According to Michelin, the new Tweel-based lunar wheel maintains flexibility and constant ground contact pressure even at very low temperatures to enable moon rovers to navigate loose soil and lunar craters with ease. It has a lower mass with a higher load capacity that is 3.3 times more efficient than the original Apollo Lunar Rover wheels.

After dabbling for years in the IT industry, Paul Tan initially began this site as a general blog covering various topics of personal interest. With an increasing number of readers paying rapt attention to the motoring stories, one thing led to another and the rest, as they say, is history. An avid electronic gadget aficionado as well as big-time coffee lover, he's also the executive producer of the Driven motoring TV programme.

It turns out, the Discovery Channel has covered this ‘tweel concept’ in one of its episode many weeks ago. The tweel version shown in the Discovery Channel is way much better with cool designs. I believe the gold-coloured tweel is actually a concept for the Lunar Rover in which looks doesn’t matter at all. Typical people at NASA doesn’t care how ugly tweel looks like, but what’s most important for them is functionality and weight reduction in the pay-load during launch. I’m sure ‘tweel’ gonna be a hot item for cars or vehicles in the not so distance future.

I’m wondering how the wheel will perform at high speeds. Heat dissipation is probably going to be okay. But the noise at high speed will kill you, Not to mention the lack of water channeling to prevent aquaplaning. And then there’s a question of traction. On hard paved surfaces, it is probably okay. But when comes to loose surfaces (ex sandy beaches) or unpaved kampong dirt road during rainy seasons – the wheel will just loose its grip.

Looks like we still need to have a bit of rubber wrapping around our rims for quite some time. But anyway, it is a good technology. Just some kinks needs to be ironed out.

How the skinny thingy can withstand the car weight and pressure? Doubt it’ll generate lotsa vortex when the wheels is spinning at >120km/h + when it emergency brakes, screamings rims insteads of tyres…

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